Osprey fire remains under investigation

Precautionary flight restriction issued

Posted: Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Jim McBridejim.mcbride@amarillo.com

Navy officials are probing the cause of a December Osprey engine compartment fire, but investigators have declared the blaze a Class B mishap that caused between $200,000 and nearly $1 million in damage, a Marine Corps spokesman said.

Meanwhile, a new temporary flight restriction has been issued for Ospreys until investigators determine the root cause of the fire.

The fire is being treated as an isolated incident while experts complete their investigation, a spokesman for the V-22 Joint Program Office said.

On Dec. 7, a fire broke out in the left nacelle of an MV-22 Osprey aircraft after it landed at Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C.

Camp Lejeune spokesman Lt. Col. Curtis Hill said the aircraft had just returned from a routine training flight and was on the ground when the fire broke out in the left nacelle about 10 p.m.

The fire was quickly extinguished on the New River flight line, and no injuries were reported.

Each wings nacelle is equipped with an engine and transmission that drive the Ospreys 38-foot diameter rotors. The aircraft is assigned to Marine Medium Tilt Rotor Squadron 204.

Staff Sgt. Angela Mink said a mishap board is investigating the blaze, and a separate Judge Advocate Generals Office investigation also is under way.

The Naval Safety Center initially classified the incident as a Class A mishap damage estimates exceeding $1 million but the fire, for now, has been reclassified as a Class B mishap, based on several criteria.

Anything above a million is a Class A, Mink said.

For now, all Osprey pilots have been instructed to turn off an engine air particle separator, a device that removes sand, dirt and other particulates before they reach the engines intake.

Within the engineering investigation, its being treated as an isolated incident in the absence of any evidence to show otherwise at this point, said James Darcy, a spokesman for the V-22 Joint Program Office.

However, they have not yet ruled out that there could be fleetwide implications. So because they havent been able to rule that out, NAV Air (Naval Air Systems Command) issued a restricted flight clearance for all V-22s, both CV and MV, that allows for normal operations but without the use of the engine air particle separator.

Running Ospreys without the device, dubbed EAPS, doesnt pose a safety issue or an operational problem for the Osprey.

Darcy said the flight restriction is a conservative measure thats been implemented while investigators determine whether the problem has implications for the Osprey fleet.

We understand what happened. We understand how it happened, but what they have yet to definitively determine is what we call the root cause, the underlying why, Darcy said.